Homage to Helen Levitt

I am continuing my reading of Monica Bravo’s Greater American Camera (2021), and I have moved on to her essay on Helen Levitt, whose work I have appreciated for years. Levitt’s main subjects were children’s drawings, children (often in ambiguous or slightly disturbing situations), and street photography involving interaction between people (it was people for her, mostly people).

Bravo writes, “[Levitt] was interested in the children’s simplification of forms, the gravity of their themes, and the naïvely sophisticated relationships they created between line and space….Her photographs demonstrate an interest not so much in children…as in a larger sense of human drama unfolding in the public sphere. When prompted, she stated that she did not like children more than the average person and never had any of her own. Rather, she insisted that she photographed them because they were the only human subjects available on the streets while adults tended to be at home or away at work” (164-165).

I didn’t have time to finish reading the essay today because Sue met me with the spontaneous suggestion that we go out to Sauvie Island and of course I said yes, yes, yes. It was a perfect late-summer day. The corn is high, the swallows are swooping, the leaves are still lush and green despite the drought and the heat. The grasses do show signs of drought, but it was gorgeous out there. (Extra.) 

We stopped for lunch coming back from the Island, and this child's drawing was posted by the front door of the restaurant.